Monday, June 23, 2014

Republic Trooper Done!

This post contains significant spoilers for the Republic Trooper storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I finished the Republic Trooper storyline a while back, but realized that I hadn't actually written a post on it. I played a Commando (ranged dps/heals) and went partially Dark Side.

Overall, the Trooper storyline is decent, but flawed. I'll break this into two lists, detailing the good and the bad.

The Good

Your squad - Unlike some of the other stories, where your companions seem only matter to the main character, the Trooper squad acts more like a real squad. There are several instances where you assign different roles to different members, or switch companions as you move through the level.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 1 is very good and very personal for your character. It's a very satisfying chapter, all in all, with excellent villains.

General Garza - Garza is pretty awesome. A tough-as-nails, older woman who is in charge of Republic Special Forces. She's devoted to the cause, but very "ends justify the means". The most memorable NPC in the storyline.

Dark Side - There are two different ways to play Dark Side. One is "ends justify the means" where you do things like sacrifice civilians in order to ensure a military victory. The other is just being a jerk and out for personal gain. The Trooper storyline does a very good job differentiating between the two.

A-77 - The trooper contains the single best moral choice I have seen in any of the TOR stories so far. In Chapter 1, you're introduced to Sergeant Jaxo, a very likeable NPC who supports you on one of your missions. You meet up with her again a couple of times later in the game. In Chapter 3, she gets captured and taken to a top-secret Imperial prison on an asteroid where she's held with 300 high-ranking civilians. Jaxo breaks out of her cell and signals Republic Command with the location. Your team goes in to rescue her.

However, it's a trap, and Imperial Forces start bombarding the asteroid. You can either save the 300 civilians in the cells, or Jaxo in the communications section. The kicker is that Jaxo breaks, and begs you to save her.

Crazy hard choice. I had to quit out of the game and think about it for a long while before I finally decided to save Jaxo. Beautiful, beautiful choice.

The Bad

General Rakton - The villain in Chapter 3 is not very memorable, or even much of a personal connection to you. Unlike the villains in the other stories, or even the villains from Chapter 1, Rakton is just not interesting.

Chapter 3 locations - War has broken out, but your squad is sent to out of the way locations. I guess they didn't have much choice given that the planet order is fixed for all stories. However, it really feels like you should have been on the front lines instead. It picks up when you finally get to Corellia, and feels more like the war story it should have been.

Those are really the only two things wrong with the Trooper storyline, but they combine to make the last part of story dull and relatively uninteresting. Chapter 3 (aside from A-77) just didn't work, and that drags down the story as a whole.

On the whole, the Trooper story was decent. However, it started out very strong with Chapter One, and went downhill after that.

The trooper story was the first one I played and at the time I loved it. After having seen all the other class stories, it kind of pales in comparison though, especially the later chapters as you said. I still agree with all of your good points though!